


saline solution

by advantagetexas



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, catch me scraping canon with a spoon like a roasted pumpkin for the good bits, give me happy endings or give me death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 20:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/advantagetexas/pseuds/advantagetexas
Summary: The future is always uncertain, the threads of fate woven into strange patterns until one day they fray into nothingness; but right now, in this temporary eternity, Sal is glad that things have worked out this way. Being doused with ancient squid ink that eats into his very soul is kinda worth it. Mostly.





	saline solution

The water begins to rise again, lapping against his ribs now as he falls deeper into the well. Every second drags on into hours. Every infinitesimal moment stretching into a dark infinity as the water slowly threatens to envelop him. He hears growling in the distance, from either a dog or a long forgotten god clamoring for his blood. To be honest he was equally scared of either option. 

  
Sal wakes up in a cold sweat to the twinkling of shitty electronic bells. He huffs, reaching for his discarded cell phone that has somehow made its way under a pile of laundry that he’d been too “busy” to put away.

  
It’s the same dream every night. The well, the water rising, the darkness and the primal fear. The same water, cold enough to suck the heat from his bones, higher every time. It had started around his ankles, but that had been months ago. Only a few months left until it was high enough to actually drown him. That sure would be an interesting night.

  
**Sal**, the text read. **Salllllll**, the next one read. **Sal I know you’re awake, you never sleep before 4am**. It was true, but he didn’t have to say it like that. Sal sighs, redialing the number and waiting through the dial tone.

  
“Sally Face!” comes the excited, though muffled voice of his best friend who is way too awake for...3:45 in the morning.

  
“Larry Face. And for your information I was asleep for once,” Sal replies, and Larry laughs on the other end of the call.

  
“Yeah, sure. Listen, Todd finally finished his analysis of that goop we found in the apartments.” Sal’s blood runs cold, his hackles raised in anticipation of bad news, and yet...

  
“Did you just call ectoplasm ‘goop’?”

  
“It’s goop, dude. Come out to the shed, Todd’s hype about it and he wants to get your opinion on it like, right now.”

  
“We live in the same house, you could’ve just come upstairs,” Sal points out. After the incident at the apartments there’d been a lot of moving days. Larry had finally moved into the shared house, Ashley had moved back to her fancy art school dorm. They’d insisted that Lisa and Henry move out, and though they didn’t quite understand why, their parents had dutifully moved into a nice little bungalow on the edge of town.

  
“Yeah. It’s cold outside though. Just come to the shed,” Larry waffles before hanging up. Sal can’t help but smile and shake his head. It’s March, of course it’s going to be cold. If he had to guess, Larry had been so excited to hear about Todd’s findings (probably also relayed by way of “phone call from within the same house”)that he’d rushed out to the shed in his pajamas and was now severely regretting it.

  
Sal put on a jacket and a pair of slippers before buckling his mask over his face, making sure it was securely fastened. On his way out of the room he grabs a second hoodie, tossing it over his shoulder so that he can put his hands in his pockets. The house is thankfully quiet as he passes through to the backyard, no strange noises or shadows moving of their own accord.

  
It is, in fact, cold outside as he makes his way to the shed, the sharp spring winds piercing though his thin pajama pants. The second he opens the door to the shed, a wave of heat hits him and he understands why neither of his friends had wanted to leave their little pocket of summer.

  
“It’s hot as hell in here,” he complains, and Todd and Larry both look up from the glowing blue CRT monitor they’d been studying.

  
“The computers tend to produce a lot of waste heat,” Todd explains, always the one with the answers, “and I haven’t really had a reason to find a solution yet.”

  
“Fair enough. What’s the deal, though? If I’m getting woken up at 4 in the goddamn morning it better be good.”

  
Todd waves him over and shows him a bunch of printed graphs and test results all scattered on a desk surrounding a petri dish full of inert black ectoplasm that seemed almost as if it was in permanent shadow, even under the bright lights of the shed. Sal avoids looking at it for longer than a second, instead choosing to hand Larry the extra jacket he’d brought. He much preferred the warm feeling the other man’s smile brought to his chest over the vague unease the gunk stirred in him.

  
“So...” Todd begins, shuffling papers together as if about to give a speech before thinking better of it and sighing. “Would you like the scientific explanation or the layman’s version?”

  
“Todd, you know I appreciate all the scientific things you do, but I have no clue what anything you say ever means.”

  
“Weren’t you a computer engineering major?”

  
“Just because I know how to build them doesn’t mean I know how they work when they’re running,” Sal points out, and Todd sighs, rolling his eyes.

  
“Alright. So in simple terms, over the months since we’ve been testing the sample, it has metamorphosed from a type of neo-spectral ectoplasm into a gelatinized Coleoidea Belemnoidea excretion.”

  
“Squid ink!” Larry adds helpfully, tucking his hands smugly into the pockets of his borrowed hoodie.

  
“So it’s just jiggly ink?” Sal asks, daring a glance at the petri dish. It does look a little less off-putting than usual.

  
“Yes. It’s literally just..._goop_,” Todd answers with a shrug. “Albeit goop from an extinct subspecies of deep-sea squid that hasn’t been documented in over 500 years, but goop nonetheless.”

  
“Okay. So it’s goop. What does that mean?”

  
“I...I don’t know,” Todd admits. “Any evidence of the supernatural is gone from every sample we took, but I’m not sure what that means for us. It could mean that we’ve won. That we get to be the big damn heroes that saved the world from a horrific demon plague-”

  
“One town, really,” Larry interrupts.

  
“Saved one town from a demon plague,” Todd corrects himself, “but it could also mean that we’ve just delayed it. And even if we’ve defeated this ONE demon, that won’t stop the cult from making another.”

  
“So we’re screwed,” Sal states, moving an errant piece of hair away from his good eye.

  
“We’re pretty screwed. But not immediately. It’s like...a delayed screw. Like a screw missing from an Ikea table, so then you have to order it and wait for it to come in the mail, but when it finally gets to you, yeah, you’re screwed,” Larry reasons, and Todd fixes him with a confused side-eye.

  
“I wouldn’t say it in so many words, but yes. You could certainly put it that way.”

  
“And this is exciting enough to be big wake-up news...how?” Todd shrugs, tilting his head over at Larry, whose sunny look has dropped into something more contemplative as he shrugs.

  
“I don’t know. What I _do_ know is that it’s late, and I’m tired. So I’m going to bed and trying not to think about how that ink ended up in that glass,” Todd monotones, gathering his things from the desk before leaving the shed, careful to shut the door gently behind him.

  
Sal looks over at Larry, who’s still avoiding his line of sight, and sighs, running a hand through his hair.

  
“Dude.”

  
“I know, dude. I just...I dunno, it’s hard to explain. It’s like...” Larry growls in frustration with himself, pacing around the small shed, hastily laced boots thunking against the unfinished wood floor. Sal lays what he hopes is a comforting hand on his shoulder and the other man stops in his tracks, looking at him expectantly. Unfortunately, there’s no words comforting enough for the mess they’ve gotten themselves into. No magic phrase that will set their lives right, that will make everything normal.

  
While Sal struggles to find something, anything, to break the tense silence, his focus suddenly jolts back to the present as he sees Larry’s hand move out of the corner of his eye, reaching for the clasp of his prosthetic. His hands fly up as he takes a step back, bracing the cold piece of plastic against his face.

  
There’s a moment, just like in his dream, where the seconds stretch out, seeming both infinite and miniscule as they both stand there before Sal finally lets his hands drop to his sides again. Larry’s face is almost a mask of its own, with so many swirling emotions vying for real estate that no single one comes through stronger than the others.

  
He reaches out again, undoing the buckles behind Sal’s head until his mask falls forward into his hand. There’s a moment of hesitation, and then he pulls the mask away, gently setting it on the desk (thankfully far away from the petri dish in the center).

  
Sal is stuck looking at a knot in the wood floor, unable to get his thoughts straight. It’s not like this is the first time Larry has seen him without his mask on, but it still makes Sal’s heart race with a mix of anxiety and embarrassment. All the self-confidence in the world means nothing when your face looks like a pound of ground chicken.

  
Larry sighs, as if on the verge of speaking, and instead pulls Sal to him, wrapping his arms tightly around the smaller man. It takes a second to process, but eventually Sal does the same, his hands grasping at the back of his taller friend’s hoodie. He feels a strange heat climb into his throat as Larry continues to hold him close, his heartbeat echoing against Sal’s ear. When he finally begins to pull away, Sal just refuses to let go; if anything, holding him even closer.

  
“Just...just give me another minute,” he whispers, barely loud enough for even himself to hear. “Please?”

  
“Anything,” Larry replies, his voice hitching almost imperceptibly. “For you, Sal? Anything.”

  
And there it is again, that moment drawing itself into forever, but this time it’s different. This time it doesn’t feel like a hand around Sal’s throat. Moreso a sunbeam in his chest, cutting through the darkness like a hot knife until it falls away in more manageable pieces.

  
“I figured it out,” Larry says when he finally steps back. He looks down at Sal, _really_ looks, not just that pitying, ashamed glance everyone else that has seen his face had given him, and smiles. “Why I was so excited about the goop results. It’s a sunshower.”

  
“What?”

  
“This whole thing, with the demons and the cult and the shitty fuckin’ squid gods trying to fuck with us? That’s the rain,” Larry explains. “But you, Sal, you’re the sun. The brightest, warmest sun. So even though it’s raining, it’s not that bad because the sun is still out.”

  
“You’re a big sap,” Sal jokes, unable to keep the corner of his mouth from quirking upward into an almost smile.

  
“Hey, if it means getting to see your smile more, then call me a maple tree because I’ll be sappy as hell every day of my life.”

  
“Ah yes, the good ol’ ground beef grin. What a lofty prize,” Sal says, the self-deprecation shining clearly enough in his voice that it makes Larry’s face drop into a concerned pout.

  
“Hey, no, wait a second,” he says, catching Sal’s wrist as he makes an attempt to pick up his mask. Sal looks petulantly up at him, waiting for him to finally relent and let go, but he doesn’t seem to be swayed. “I know you get told all the time that it’s what's on the inside that counts, but like, man, it really is. But not like... I mean...” he growls in frustration again as his words fail to order themselves in the way he wants.

  
“I like you for who you are, Sal, I always have,” he says finally, much to Sal’s surprise. His eyes widen and his jaw drops slightly before he realizes that he doesn’t have on his mask to hide his emotions and he makes an attempt to quell the feelings suddenly raging like a wildfire in his chest. “You could have the face of a literal ocelot that’s been put through a food processor and I’d still find a way to think you were cool.”

  
“When we say ‘like’, are we-” Sal starts, his heart beating nearly out of his chest before Larry interrupts him.

  
“In both the college and middle school senses of the word,” he admits with a pained chuckle. “You’re my boy, dude. No matter what.”

  
“Through demons and everything in the meantime.” Larry nods, and suddenly everything clicks into place. Like being in the eye of a hurricane, there was no telling how long this peace was going to last. No telling how long they had until some new threat was knocking down their door looking for vengeance. But that was okay, because at least they’d be spending it together.

  
“I love you, dude,” Sal mumbles, though it echoes in the quiet of the small shed as if he’d screamed it.

  
“I love you too,” Larry responds with another self-conscious sideways smile that takes a jackhammer to Sal’s heart.

  
The future is always uncertain, the threads of fate woven into strange patterns until one day they fray into nothingness; but right now, in this temporary eternity, Sal is glad that things have worked out this way. Being doused with ancient squid ink that eats into his very soul is kinda worth it. Mostly.

**Author's Note:**

> yes hello its me, returning 2 years late with a chai latte and a fix-it fic that i have forgotten how to format on this website  
i love this game more than i've loved anything in a long time, so i tried to do it at least some justice, let me know what yall think (also, the title is a song by my dearest wilbur soot, its good, i promise)


End file.
